Neoteric - (a.) of modern times;
Sage - (n.) One venerated for experience, judgment, and wisdom.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Postfeminism and the Souls of Computers

My lungs have been burnished by the fire.

There is a great good afoot.

"Girl, yo ass is FOUL," I just said to Margery. Haaa. Sometimes I just amuse myself horribly.

Oh how I love to be jolly. One of my professors (she is a medievalist) has a chapel built in her house, and she worships there with her cats, whose names are Felicitas and Oxymoron and Conundrum. Also she wears fantastic red robes with jeweled she-bobs all over them. I am not even kidding. I had seen black women and Indian women wear such robes before, but never a white woman.

"Oh, Margery, your eyes are so soulful," I just told her. Once when she madly ate all her dry food in a day, I was tempted for a split second to call her Largery, but then I felt bad, and didn't. And plus, she is a small but hearty cat.

On Friday night I smoked with a Bolivian whose hair is just the same as mine, except he does not use as much conditioner as me so his is more untamed, and he knows a lot of things about the souls of computers because he has devoted his life to physics and mathematics and quarks and other particles, and we talked for like an hour about computers, and their human attributes, and the behaviours they exhibit.

One thing I do not understand is why computers have to be told things in codes, and why you have to write codes to get the computer to obey your will.

At one point I said, "Well, you know, sometimes I suspect that Charles FitzGerald is trying to connect to the Internet behind my back," and he paused and said, "Uh, that's called MICROSOFT!" and I said, "NO, it's just that my computer thinks he knows what my will is, and he is trying to be helpful, but he is not always RIGHT!" And it is true.

My computer's older brother is Clarence, who belongs to my sister, and is a temperamental 2-year-old laptop who has had a lot of misfortunes (like once he got pushed off a desk by accident, and to him it felt like being pushed off a very tall building, for it was also a very tall desk). So I cannot really blame him, because things like that are not his fault, and probably contribute to the willful things that he does.

I try to treat Charles FitzGerald with more responsibility, and care, and so far I have been quite good to him, as he has been to me. Except there was that time when he refused to access the Internet for awhile, but that was not his fault (I thought an evil spirit had entered into him, as the computer people on the phone had told me, but it turned out that he only needed his modem turned off, and unplugged from the surge protector, and then plugged back in and turned on after 20 seconds, and then he was right as rain).

My father was the one who healed him, over the phone, as he has also healed Clarence many times as well (although sometimes he has to heal Clarence in person, because Clarence is of a difficult temperament).

Charles FitzGerald's name came to me in the summer, when I was high, so I wrote it down, and from then on I was certain of it, and it suits him well.

"I am glad I do not have to lay eggs," I just thought for no reason.

The problem is, I am still trying to figure out what postfeminism is, because I have to give a presentation on it on Wednesday, and I'm just like, "Dude, what the fuck IS postfeminism, and why won't Microsoft Word recognize it as a word? Is Microsoft Word behind the TIMES?" and so that is the theme of my presentation, but dressed up in polite academic language, and structure. But only the first part of that question is the theme behind my presentation, and not the part about Microsoft Word, although we'll probably bitch about that before class, or after.

And now I am getting a pretty good idea but postfeminism is, but I still think it is a strange and unnecessary designation, because Third Wave feminism or postcolonial feminism would work just as well, and be less prone to misinterpretation.

Margery just willfully knocked a library book of recent critical essays on Titus Andronicus off my table, and looked at me defiantly. She behaves like Tasty in that respect, as they both like to challenge gravity and its consequences, and do not always believe in it.

"Yes," I said as I poured the last drop of coffee into my mug. "Every drop is an ELIXER."Elixer is a good word to use. I have incorporated it into my vernacular over the last few months, and I use it a lot.